Philip Berg - Biography

Biography

Berg was born as Shraga Feivel Gruberger in Brooklyn to an Orthodox Jewish family. He is said to have been educated at a yeshiva where he was allegedly ordained as a rabbi in 1951 and then started working as an insurance salesman at New York Life two years later. His first wife was named Rivkah with whom he had several children. It was Rivka's uncle, Rabbi Yehuda Brandwein, dean of the prestigious Yeshiva Kol Yehuda, who Berg first met on a trip to Israel in 1962, and who would become his Kabbalistic mentor. There is some disagreement over who succeeded Rabbi Brandwein as dean of Yeshiva Kol Yehuda - Berg has claimed to have replaced Rabbi Brandwein in that role, but that claim is disputed by Brandwein's son Avraham, who is the current dean. Despite this, Articles of Incorporation were filed with the IRS for U.S. branch of the "National Institute for the Research of Kabbalah" in 1965. These Articles of Incorporation were signed by both Rabbi Brandwein and Rabbi Philip Berg. Later, the organization's name was changed to The Research Centre for Kabbalah and finally, The Kabbalah Centre.

After Brandwein's death in 1969, Berg returned to the U.S. and began working again with his former secretary and future wife, Karen, on the condition that she let him teach her Kabbalah, a discipline he claims was reserved exclusively for men. In 1971 Philip and Karen married and traveled to Israel. Then, in 1973, the Bergs returned to Queens, where they established their full-time headquarters during the 1980s.

Reports about Berg are conflicting. According to a 1994 article in Tel Aviv magazine, Berg says he was ordained in the U.S.A. in the early '50s and got an additional ordination in Israel from his former father-in-law. The Los Angeles Task Force on Cults and Missionaries claims he is not affiliated with the 80-year-old Yeshivah Kol Yehuda in Jerusalem, once headed by Berg's ex-father-in-law, the late Rabbi Brandwein, though he claims he is.